Building a healthier future for rural kids

Doctor's charitable project has helped end students' malnourishment in Yulong county

As a doctor specializing in nutrition, Bian Huawei did not expect that a random stop at a school in Yulong Naxi autonomous county in Yunnan province 14 years ago would steer him toward a 4 million yuan ($548,600) charitable cause.

In 2009, he visited Runan Primary School at lunchtime while on a tour of the county commissioned by the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation to assess whether children were getting adequate nutrition.

"I went to look at the students. I had become a father not long before," said Bian, director of the clinical nutrition department of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.